The Paley Center For Media is to collect, preserve, and interpret television, radio and Internet programming and to make these programs available to the public. The Center has an international collection of nearly 150,000 programs covering more than seventy-five years of television and radio history including news, public affairs programs and documentaries, performing arts programs, children's programming, sports, comedy and variety shows, and commercial advertising. The collection, chosen for its artistic, cultural, and historical significance, is catalogued in a computerized library that is easily accessible to the public. Each year the Center, using radio and television programs from the collection, organizes major screening and listening series, festivals, seminars, and education classes that focus on topics of social, historical, popular, or artistic interest, so make sure to visit their website for up-to-date information.
You may visit the Center and either attend daily public screenings and radio presentations, or listen privately to programs from their vast collection:
Daily Screenings and Radio Presentations From noon until closing time, the Center presents a wide variety of programs from the collection in two screening rooms and two main theaters. Pick up a copy of the daily schedule at the front desk in the John E. Fetzer Lobby to see what's playing. Also available in the lobby are complete schedules for exhibitions and screening series that have been organized by the Curatorial Department. Programming from current series and exhibitions is shown throughout the day, and the schedule will tell you what's ahead in the coming months.
Choosing a Program from the Collection Access to information on the Center's vast collection is literally at your fingertips in the Library. (You must make a reservation to use the Library at the lobby front desk when you arrive.) Using a Macintosh computer, you search the database for the television or radio program of your choice. A Visitor Services staff person will be glad to assist you at any time! When you find a program you want, you reserve it and then go to a console room, where you watch or listen to the program at a monitor with headphones.
The Center has a slew of facilities, all available to the public: designated Scholars' Rooms for research utilizing the collection; Listening Rooms for radio programming where visitors select from series developed by the Center.
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